Letter: Nixon's presidency tells a different story

Chris Kaergard and Chuck Sweeny’s rose-colored remembrances poetically recalling the demise of former President Richard Nixon would be laughable if they weren’t so pathetic.

In Aug. 10’s Rockford Register Star, both authors opined on the man and the last days of a conspiracy attempting to usurp the Constitution and create an “imperial presidency.”

Remarkably, Sweeny would have us believe Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate scandal was marginal, and that his resignation was the poor product of staff ineptitude. Nothing was further from the truth, including Nixon.

Nixon never acknowledged the illegitimacy of the bungled Watergate break-in or the malevolent cover-up he personally managed. Consider his 1977 answer to broadcaster David Frost: “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

After Gerald Ford’s pardon, Republican Party conservatives began a crusade toward vindication, achieving their phoenix-like resurrection in Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election. Former acolytes Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld continued Nixon’s ideology of a presidency beyond constitutional reproach all the way to Baghdad.

Let’s not fool ourselves through fond nostalgic delusions: Richard Nixon orchestrated and conducted a federal criminal enterprise for self-vindication. That’s his presidential legacy and disgrace, not something to recall with admiration.